A girl is sitting on the cold seat of a swing in a school playground, slowly swinging back and forth, her feet scraping a gravel. It is a cold Autumn day, but the only garments she is wearing are shorts and a long sleeved shirt, tattered and stained with something dark red. “Paint?”, you think. She is looking down at her lap, her bangs covering the side of her face. The wind whistles an eerie, familar tune, cutting through the trees’ branches, tearing off the last of Autumn’s leaves. A newspaper article drifts slowly over to the girl, and it lands in her lap.

She cocks her head to the side slightly, and picks up the article. Silence. Then, the girl laughs, sweeping her bangs from the side of her face. She notices you, and glances up.

Her eyes are cold, black, and empty-devoid of emotion. Her fingers let go of their grasp on the article, and her pale hand raises and turns it’s bloody palm to you. She waves, which sends the article fluttering off again to the mercy of the wind.

Suddenly, she slides off the seat. It flies back, hitting the metal bars up righting the swing set. Clink, clink.

She starts to run toward you, a dishonest smile plastered on her grimy face. You notice she isn’t wearing shoes, and her long black hair is unkempt. The girl stops running, and is standing just a few feet away from you. “Hi. Wanna play a game with me?” she asks, rubbing her bloody hands on her shorts, already caked in layers of dirt and blood. Speechless, you shake your head. She shrugs, and skips off to the school’s back entrance.

The article from before floats by a few feet a way, before gently landing in front of your feet. Cautiously, you pick it up. The girl giggles, and slams the door shut behind her.

BLOODY MURDER AT THE HUNTINGTON HOUSE, the article states, in bold, black letters.

The police are investigating a gruesome family murder that was found out earlier today. The slaughtered remains of the two twin five year old girls, mother, and father, have no evidence on them, Detective Hardy says. The only survivor of this horrible group murder is third child, Mary Huntington, 13, who is currently missing.

Your eyes drift down to a picture of the Huntington family, all sitting on a picnic blanket underneath a tree. The twins are holding ice cream cones, and the mother is in her husband’s arms, laughing. The father is looking at the twins, smiling. But Mary is sitting off in a corner, her eyes slightly off the direction of the camera, staring at the camera man.

Outside, the sky is plastered with stars and a full moon on a dark canvas. There is a quite a commotion going on at the Gerald Mansion.

“What a pity,” a hooded man wearing a long black cloak is saying humorously, as if he is reciting a joke at a cocktail party. “Such a beautiful girl, going to waste.” He takes a long drag on his cigarette before dropping it and crushing it with his heel.

“Ple-please,” a red-haired woman begs, dangling in mid-air, her fingers fighting to seize the rails of a balcony. She is slipping slowly, her grasp on the rails loosening. The man chuckles softly, and saunters over to the rail. He crouches down, and takes a hold of her hands. The woman looks up at the general direction where his eyes should be, silently pleading. A few moments pass, and it seems the man has changed his mind. He hasn’t.

“Good-bye,” the faceless man whispers, before letting go of her limp fingers.

The woman does not scream. She does not whimper. She down not even shed a tear. But her eyes do not bother to hide the look of hatred and betrayal.

A second passes. Only two, three, more seconds pass, but time creeps along like dripping molasses. The woman hits the concrete with a sickening thud, and what sounds like green branches breaking in half is heard. A malicious laugh erupts from the man standing on the balcony. He examines his handy work, leaning on the rails.

She is still alive.

Twitching, the girl spits out a trickle of blood, and her fingers unwrap slowly. Blood slowly stains the ground, a tremendous amount spilling from her body. Pain floods as she takes a sharp, quick, intake of breath. She exhales, her heart pounding viciously. Shocks of agony seize her limbs as she painfully crawls onto her hands, before failing, and losing the fight with gravity. The shock of hitting the cold, bloody pond on the concrete floor sends her through worldly torture.

Her limbs shake, and her rib cage rattles. Short, quick gaps of breath involuntarily escape her body, once again causing aches. She curls up into the fetal position, and her mouth fills up with the metallic, distinct, taste of blood. She weakly opens her mouth, and it floods over, sending streams down her cheeks.

Her chest heaves up and down, her blood-red lips parting slowly and softly exhaling away her life. Her once rosy cheeks and fair complexion is now pale and stained with blood, dripping from her eyes like tears. Her eyes flutter every now and then, and the heart pounding against her rib cage, wanting to be free of this tortured body, starts to beat slower.

The girl can see her life evaporating into the air around her, her soul leaving her body as she closes her eyes. The breathing slows so that she only takes a weak intake of air every few seconds. Finally, with her last exhale, her limbs go, and her head flops to her side. Her red hair, concealing with the pool of blood around her, sticks to her sweat layered forehead.

Slowly, slowly, the last trickle of blood escapes from the corner of her mouth, and creeps down. Her skin is starting to show the bruises, the patches of once untouched skin losing it’s perfection. Her green, vibrant eyes grow dull underneath the eyelids, and her skin is as pale as ever.

She was the real life sleeping beauty, and will now be the never awoken beauty.